Breaking News ForumUS will help Turkey hold Syria â??accountable' for jet shoot-down, says Obama spokesm at News Forum - ABC News - Found 1 hour ago
The White House on Monday promised to work with Turkey and other NATO ...

Betcha didn't think this is how the war could start did ya, huh, did ya...Can Turkey force U.S. and other NATO countries to attack Syria?June 25th, 2012 - Turkey's leadership took on a much more strident tone on Sunday, calling the downing of its military jet by Syria an "act of aggression" and invoking its right to consult with other NATO nations. That call to meet has raised the question of whether other nations, including the United States, would be compelled to strike back on Turkey's behalf.

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Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has spoken with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the foreign ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and Iran, and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton since the incident, spokesman Selcuk Unal told CNN Saturday. British Foreign Minister William Hague Sunday called the incident "outrageous" and said he condemned it wholeheartedly." "The Assad regime should not make the mistake of believing that it can act with impunity. It will be held to account for its behavior," Hague said of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The top American military official, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, called his Turkish counterpart this weekend, a U.S. official told CNN's Barbara Starr.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke with her Turkish counterpart, as well. In a statement issued Sunday she called the incident a "brazen and unacceptable act in the strongest possible terms." NATO members will be meeting this Tuesday in Belgium to discuss the incident, at the request of Turkish officials, according to NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu. The meeting, or "consultations," is one Turkey called under Article 4 of the NATO treaty, Lungescu said in an e-mail to CNN. Turkey is expected to make a presentation about the plane incident. "Under Article 4, any ally can request consultations whenever, in the opinion of any of them, their territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened," she wrote.

With the consultations, there is a chance Turkey will demand a collective military response. The notion comes from what is known as Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Washington Treaty, which states that should a member nation - which Turkey is - be attacked, other NATO members are compelled in a collective act of self-defense "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area." Article 5 has been invoked just once since NATO's founding, the military response to 9/11. In this incident, after restrained comments early on, Turkey has issued much angrier comments as details became known. On Sunday, Turkey's foreign minister said the country will act "decisively" within international law and refuted Syria's contention that the plane was shot down because it displayed an "act of aggression."

The plane in the Friday incident was unarmed and sending no hostile signals, said Davutoglu. The plane was testing Turkey's radar systems, Davutoglu said. "You have to first send a caution, a warning," he said in the first detailed Turkish statement on the international incident. "If the warning doesn't work, you scramble your planes, you send a stronger signal, you force the plane to land. There wasn't enough time to do any of that in the time that our plane was in Syrian airspace." Davutoglu added the plane was shot down in international air space. Turkey has invoked Article 4 before, after tensions arose on its border with Iraq. "This did not lead to the invocation of Article 5," Longescu noted. A senior American administration official speaking on background because of the sensitivity of the issue, told CNN's Jill Dougherty on Sunday that Turkey's request "is just consultations, and they aren't asking for more than that." The official added that the move does mean Turkey considers Syria's shooting down their plane a threat to Turkey's security.